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AN ORATION. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



FEW AND PHI GAMMA SOCIETIES. 



OF EMORY COLLEGE, 



AT OXFOBD, GA., JULY, 1853, 



BY HON. ROBERT TOOMBS. 






Slavery in the United States : its consistency with Republican Institutions, and 
its effect upon the Slave and Society. 




AUGUSTA, GEORGIA. 

STEAM POWER PRESS OF CHRONICLE & SENTINEL. 
1853. 



Ttok 



C R R E S P N D E N C E . 



FEW HALL, July 20, 1853, 

Hon. Robert Toombs : 

Dear Sir: — As the organ of the Few Society of Emory 
College, we are authorised to tender you the thanks of that body for the very 
able address delivered to-day, before the two literary societies of this 
Institution. And believing it to be a clear and convicting vindication of the 
institution of slavery, and calculated to throw much light upon the same, 
would most respectfully solicit a copy for publication. 
Very Respectfully, 

W. H. HILL. ) 

H. R. FELDER, } Cor. Committee, 

W. W. KEATON, ) 



OXFORD. Ga., July 20, 1853. 
Gextlemk.\: 

Your note of to-day asking a copy of my address for publication iff 
received. I will furnish you with one at an early day. For the very flattering 
terms in which you have been pleased to communicate the wishes of the Few 
Society, you will please accept my thanks. 

I am very respectfully, your obedient Servant, 

R. TOOMBS. 
To Messrs. W. H. Hill, H. R. Feldbr, W. W. Keatox, Committee. 



I 



SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES; 

Its consistency with Republican Institutions, and 
its effect upon the Slave and Society. 



Public opinion has always been a recognised element in 
directing the affairs of the world, and many causes have 
combined in our day to increase its strength and power. 
The more general diffusion of education, the increased 
facilities of personal intercourse, the rapidity with which 
ideas and intelligence may be transmitted, and a more 
general agreement among mankind, as to the standard by 
which man and all of his acts ought to be tried, have mad'-" 
this power formidable beyond all former precedent in the 
world's history. Its jurisdiction seems to be universal, 
circumscribed by no limits, bounded by no recognised land 
marks, it invades the sanctuaries of the Most High and 
questions his oracles — enters the palaces of kings and rulers, 
and the homes of the people, and summons all to answer at 
its bar. Being but the judgment of fallible man, it ca?i 
claim no exemption from his errors, his frailties, his igno- 
rance, or passions, yet being mischievous even in its errors, 
it is not wise or safe to disregard it. 

Before this tribunal our social and political system is 
arraigned, and we are summoned to answer. It is my 
purpose, to-day, to respond to the summons. I consider the 
occasion not inappropriate. The investigative discussion 
and decision of social questions are no longer confined to 



legislative halls and political assemblies of the people. The 
secluded halls of science already resound with the notes of 
controversy on the subject. 

Professors of some of the most ancient and eminent 
literary institutions in the Northern States, have recently 
entered this arena against us, and their theological semina- 
ries are animating the zeal, if not increasing the knowledge 
of the combatants. One of -the professors of the theological 
college of New England is now traversing old England, 
traducing his countrymen and her institutions, and is appro- 
priately remunerated in the pence and plaudits of her 
aristocracy. The British reviews and periodical literature 
have entered with zeal into the contest. The 31 uses have 
abandoned Arcadian groves and Elysian fields, and have 
taken up their abode in waving cane and blooming cotton 
fields. Romance revels in this literary El Dorado, and 
transmutes unreal woes into substantial coin. 

That the British" government should second these 
assaults both at home and abroad, excites no surprise in 
those who have marked her policy or studied her history. 
She joins in this crusade under the cry of Religion, Human- 
ity and Liberty, while her whole history proves that she has 
never, in her public policy, had the slightest regard for either. 
Her career, from William the Norman to this hour, has 
been but a continual warfare against the liberties and rights 
of the whole human race. Every continent of the earth, 
and every isle of the sea has been the theatre of her violence, 
inhumanity and injustice ; no race, not even her own, has 
escaped her terrible energy in crime. As late as the seven- 
teenth century, she sold Englishmen as well as Africans in 
slavery to her own colonies. She rescued victims from 
Jeffreys and the bloody assizes to make merchandise of 
them in the new world. Her justice and humanity have 
been aptly illustrated in her conquest and government of 
Ireland — her regard for the rights and liberties of other 
nations, by her conquest and plunder of India — her public 



morality, by her war with China, which she waged without 
a decent pretext to arrest an attempt at a social reform, and 
to make the Celestials buy of her poison and calico. To-day 
she is waging war, both in Africa and in India, to subject, 
new millions to her despotism, and to supply new victims to 
her avarice. At this moment she avows an alliance with 
the Emperor of the French to uphold the crescent against 
the cross — Mahomedanism against Christianity in Constanti- 
nople. The Emperor of Russia demands securities for 
Christianity in the Ottoman Empire ; the Turk refuses them, 
and Protestant England and Catholic France announce their 
readiness to back the refusal with war. In Turkey both 
domestic slavery and political despotism exist in their most 
rigid forms, and her slave markets are daily crowded with 
the fairest daughters of the Caucassian race. Yet this 
defender of Christianity, and champion of humanity and 
liberty, is ready to maintain the Koran against the Bible, and 
the slavery of both white and black races in Turkey, to 
preserve the balance of power in Europe, and her trade with 
the followers of Mahomed. But her mercenary hypocrisy 
no longer deceives mankind. 

Commercial and political jealousy is the fountain from 
which flows her crocodile tears in behalf of the African 
slave., The productions of our slave labor have driven the 
like productions of her free blacks out of the markets of the 
world, and have built up for us a commercial marine, which 
threatens her supremacy on the seas. Our manufacturers 
are meeting and competing with hers in every market, and 
the liberty and prosperity of our people have awakened 
a feeling of discontent in her toiling and suffering millions, 
and when their great struggle for the rights of humanity 
shall come, her government and her aristocracy well know 
upon which side will be the sympathies, and perchance the 
power of America. Therefore she labors not for liberty, 
humanity or justice ; she struggles for neither the happiness 
of tin; master, nor the rights of the slave, but for the ruin of 



8 

both. But the time and circumstances of the assault are as 
striking as the character of our assailants. For nearly 
twenty years our domestic enemies have struggled by pen 
and speech to excite discontent among the white race, and 
insurrection among the black ; their efforts have shaken 
the national government to its deep foundation, and bursted 
the bonds of christian unity in our land. Yet the objects of 
their attacks — the slaveholding states — reposing in the confi- 
dence of their strength, have scarcely felt the shock. In 
glancing over the civilized world, the eye rests upon not a 
single spot where all classes of society are so well content 
with their social system, or have greater reason to be so, 
than in the slaveholding states of the American Union. 
Stability, progress, order, peace, content and prosperity, 
reign throughout our borders. Not a single soldier is to be 
found in our widely extended domain, to overawe or protect 
society. The desire for organic change nowhere manifests 
itself. These great social and political' blessings are 
not the results of accident, but the results of a wise, 
just and humane republican system. It is my purpose to 
vindicate the wisdom, humanity, and justice of this system, 
to show that the position of the African race in it, is consis- 
tent with its principles, advantageous to that race and society. 
African slavery existed in all the colonies at the com- 
mencement of the revolution. The paramount authority of 
the crown with or without the consent of the colonies, had 
introduced and legalised it ; it was inextricably interwo- 
ven with the very frame work of society, especially in the 
Southern States. The question was not presented to us 
whether it was just or beneficial to the African, or advanta- 
geous to us to tear him away by force or fraud from bondage 
in his own country, and place him in a like condition in 
ours. England and the christian world had long since 
settled that question for us. At the final overthrow of 
British authority in these states, our ancestors found seven 
hundred thousand of the -African race anions: them in 



9 

bondage, concentrated, from the nature of oar climate and pro- 
duction, chiefly in the present slaveholding states. It became 
their duty to establish governments over the country from 
which their valour had driven out British authority. They 
entered upon this great work, profoundly impressed with the 
truth, that that government was best which secured the 
greatest happiness possible to the whole society, and adopted 
constitutional Republics as the best mode to secure that 
great end of human society. They incorporated no Uto- 
pian* theories in their system. Starting from the point that 
each state was sovereign, and embodied the collective will 
and power of its whole people, they affirmed its right and 
duty to define and fix, as well as protect and defend the 
rights of each individual member of the state, and to hold 
all individual rightsas subordinate to the great interests of the 
whole society. This last proposition is the corner stone of 
Republican government, which must be stricken out before 
the legal status of the African race among us can be shown 
to be inconsistent with its principles. The question with the 
builders up of our system of government, was not what 
rights man mijrht have in a state of nature, but what rights 
he ought to have in a state of society ; they dealt with rights 
as things of compact and not of birthright, in the concrete 
and not in the abstract. A very slight examination of our 
state constitutions, will show how little they regarded vague 
notions of abstract liberty or natural equality in fixing the 
rights of the white race, as well as the black. The elective 
franchise, the cardinal feature of our system, was granted, 
withheld, or limited, according to their ideas of public policy. 
It was withheld by all of them from females, not because 
they were deemed less competent to exercise it than many 
to whom it was granted, but because it was adjudged that 
their own and the public happiness would be promoted by 
the exclusion. 

All cf them excluded minors because they were adjudged, 
as a class, incompetent to exercise it wisely. They all 



10 

excluded the African race, free as well as bond, because as 
a race they were considered unfit to be trusted with it. All 
of them excluded the Indian tribes from that right, or any 
other in the social compact. The constitutions of some of 
the states excluded from the right of suffrage all persons 
except the owners of the soil, and all of them, it is believed, 
originally imposed some condition or restraint upon its exer- 
cise, applicable to all persons. The same great principle is 
no less happily illustrated in the numerous restraints placed 
by both our state and national constitutions, upon the supposed 
abstract right of a mere numerical majority to govern 
society in all cases. Thus our institutions every where 
affirm the subordination of individual rights to the interest 
and safety of the whole society. 

The slave holders acting upon these principles, finding the 
Africans already among them in slavery, unfit to be intrusted 
with political power, and incapable as freemen of either 
securing their own happiness, or promoting the public 
prosperity, recognised their condition as slaves, and subject- 
ed it to legal control. The justice and policy of this decision, 
have both been greatly cpiestioned. and both must depend 
upon the soundness of the assumptions upon which it was 
based. I hold that they were sound and true, and that the 
African is unfit to be intrusted with political power, and 
incapable as a freeman of securing his own happiness or 
contributing to the public prosperity, and that whenever the 
two races co-exist, a state of slavery is best for him and for 
society. And under it, in our country, he is in a better 
condition than any he has ever attained in any other age and 
country, either in bondage or freedom. To prove this, I 
propose to trace the African rapidly from his earliest history 
to the present time. The monuments of that profoundly 
mysterious people, the Egyptians, carry him back to the 
morning of time — older than the pyramids — they furnish 
the evidence both of his national identity and his social 
degradation, before history began. We first behold him a 



11 

slave in foreign lands, we then find him a slave in his native 
land, and then after forty centuries have passed over him, 
we still find him a slave, and a slave of savage masters as 
incapable as himself of even attempting a single step in civi- 
lization. We find him then without government, or laws, or 
protection, without letters, or arts, or industry, without 
religion, or even the aspirations which would raise him to 
the rank of an idolater, and in his lowest type, his almost 
only mark of humanity is that he walks erect in the image of 
the Creator. Annihilate his race to-day in Africa, and in a 
score of years there would be no more trace of his existence 
than of the wild beasts of the forest. This has ever been 
his condition in the home which Providence assigned him. 

In the eastern hemisphere he has been found in all ages 
scattered among the nations of every degree of civilization, 
yet always in a servile condition. Amid the convulsions of 
the world, nearly all people of the old world have, at some 
time, passed under the yoke, yet in none but the African do 
we find slavery his unvarying, normal condition. 

Very soon after the discovery and settlement of America, 
the policy of the christian world bought large numbers of 
their people of their savage masters and countrymen, and 
imported them into the Western World. Here we are ena- 
bled to view them under different and far more favourable 
conditions. In Hayti, by the encouragement of the French 
Government, after a lon<»- probation of slavery, they became 
free; and, led on by the valour and conduct of the mixed 
breeds, aided by overpowering numbers, they massacred the 
small number of whites who inhabited the Island, and 
succeeded to the undisputed sway of the finest island in the 
West Indies under the highest state of cultivation. Their 
condition in Hayti left nothing to be desired for the most 
favorable experiment of the capacity of the race for self- 
government and civilization. This experiment has now 
been tested for sixty years, and its results are before the 
world. A war of races began the moment t In* fear of foreign 



12 

invasion ceased, and resulted in the extermination of the 
greater number of the mulattoes who had rescued them from 
the dominion of the whites. Revolutions, tumults and dis- 
orders have been the ordinary pastimes of the emancipated 
blacks ; production has almost ceased, and their stock of 
civilization acquired in slavery has become already exhaust- 
ed, and they are now scarcely distinguishable from the tribes 
from which they were torn in their native land. 

More recently the same experiment has been tried in 
Jamaica, under the auspices of England. The Island of 
Jamaica was one of the most beautiful, productive, and 
prosperous of the British colonial possessions. England, 
deceived by the theories of her speculative philanthropists 
into the opinion that free blacks would be more productive 
laborers than slaves, in 1838 proclaimed total emancipation 
of the black race in Jamaica. Her arms and her power 
have watched over and protected them ; not only the interest 
but the absolute necessities of the white proprietors of the 
land compelled them to offer every inducement and stimulant 
to industry, yet the experiment stands before the world a 
confessed failure. Ruin has overwhelmed the proprietors ; 
and the negro, true to his nationality, buries himself in filth, 
and sloth, and crime. In the United States, too, we have 
peculiar opportunities for studying the African race under 
different conditions. Here we find him in slavery ; here we 
find him also a freeman in the slaveholding and in the non- 
slaveholding states. The best specimen of the free blacks 
to be found are in the Southern States, in the closest contact 
with slavery and subject to many of its restraints. Upon 
the theory of the abolitionists the most favorable condition 
in which you can view the free negro is in the non-slavehold- 
ing states of the Union ; there we ought to expect to find 
him displaying all the capability of his race for improvement, 
in a temperate climate, among an active, industrious, and 
ingenious people, surrounded by sympathising friends, and 
mild, and just, and equal institutions, if he fails here, surely 



13 

it can be chargeable to nothing but himself. lie has had 
seventy years to cleanse himself and his race from the lep- 
rosy of slavery, yet what is his condition to-day V He is 
lord of himself, but he finds it "a heritage of woe.'' After 
seventy years of probation among themselves, the Northern 
States, acting upon the same principles of self-protection 
which had marked our policy, declare him unfit to enjoy the 
rights and perform the duties of citizenship. Denied social 
equality by an irreversable law of nature, and political rights 
by municipal law, incapable of maintaining an unequal 
struggle with a superior race, the melancholy history of his 
career of freedom is here most usually found recorded in 
criminal courts, jails, poor houses, and penitentiaries. The 
authentic statistics of crime and poverty show an amount of 
misery and crime among the free blacks out of all propor- 
tion to their numbers, when compared to any class of the 
white race. This fact has had itself recognised in the most 
decisive manner throughout the Northern States. No town, 
or city, or state, encourages their emigration ; many of them 
discourage it by political legislation ; and some of the non- 
slaveholding States have absolutely prohibited their entry 
into their borders, under any circumstances whatever. If the 
Northern States which adopt this policy, deny the truth of 
the principles upon which our policy is built and maintained, 
they are guilty of a most cruel injury to an unhappy race. 
They do admit it, and expel them from their borders and 
drive them out as wanderers and outcasts. The result of 
this policy is every where apparent. The statistics of popu- 
lation supply the evidence of their condition. In the non- 
slaveholding states their annual increase, during the last ten 
years, has been but little over one per cent., even with the 
additions of fugitives from labor and emancipated slaves 
from the South, clearly showing that in this their most 
favored condition when left to themselves they are barely 
capable of maintaining their existence, and with the prospect 
of a denser population and greater competition in labor for 



14 

employment consequent thereon, they are in danger of becom- 
ing extinct. The Southern States, acting upon the same 
admitted fact, keep them in the condition in which we found 
them, protect them against themselves and compel them to 
contribute to their own and the public interests and welfare. 
That our system does promote the well-being of the African 
race subject to it, and the public interest I shall now proceed 
to show by facts which are open to all men and can be neither 
controverted or denied. We submit our slave institutions to 
the same tests by which we try the labor of other countries, 
and which are admitted to be sound by the common consent 
of mankind, and we say that under them we have not 
only elevated the African above his own race in any other 
country, but that his condition is superior to that of millions 
of laborers in England, who neglects her own to look after 
the condition of our operatives. 

Our political system gives the slave great and valuable 
rights. His life is equally protected with that of his master, 
his person is secure from assault against all others except 
his master, and his power in this respect is placed under 
salutary restraints. He is entitled by law to ample food and 
clothing, and exempted from excessive labour, and when no 
longer capable of labour, in old age or disease, his comfort- 
able maintainance is a legal charge upon his master. We 
know that these rights are, in the main, faithfully secured to 
him ; but I rely not on the knowledge of ourselves, but 
appeal to public facts. These are furnished by our public 
statistics. They show that our slaves are larger consum- 
ers of animal food than any population in Europe, and that 
their natural increase is equal to that of any other people, 
which are universally admitted tc^ts that their physical comforts 
are amply secured. In 1790 there were less than seven hun- 
dred thousand slaves in the United States; they now number 
three and a quarter millions. The same authority shows their 
increase within the last ten years to have been above 
twenty-eight per cent., or nearly three per cent, per annum, 



15 

an increase equal, allowing* for the element of foreign 
emigration, to the white race, and nearly three times that of 
the free blacks of the North. These evidences of their 
personal rights, well-being, and physical comfort, are free 
from all cavil and admit of no escape. But these legal 
rights of the slave embrace but a small portion of the 
privileges actually enjoyed by him. The nature of the rela- 
tion of master and slave begets kindnesses, imposes duties, 
(and secures their performance,) which exist in no other 
relation of capital and labor. Interest and humanity co-op- 
erate in harmony for the well-being of our labourer. A 
striking evidence of this fact, is found in our religious statis- 
tics. While religious instruction is not enjoined by law in 
all the states, the number of slaves who are in communion 
with the different churches, abundantly proves the universality 
of their enjoyment of religious privileges. And a learned 
clergyman in New York has recently shown, from the records 
of our evangelical churches, that a greater number of African 
slaves *in the United States have enjoyed, and are enjoying, 
the consolations of religion than the combined efforts of 
all the christian churches have been able to redeem from 
the heathen world, since the introduction of slavery among 
us. Yet the immoralities of the slaves, and of those 
connected with slavery, are constant themes of aboli- 
tion denunciation. They are lamentably great ; but it re- 
mains to be shown that they are greater than with the 
laboring poor of England or any other country. And it is 
shown that our slaves are without the additional stimulant of 
want to drive them to crime ; we have at least removed 
from them the excuse and temptation of hunger. Poor 
human nature here is at least spared the wretched fate of the 
utter prostration of its moral nature at the feet of its physical 
wants. Lord Ashley's report to the British Parliament 
shows that in the capitol of the British empire, perhaps within 
hearing of Stafford House and Exeter Hall, the gnawings of 
hunger, and the cries of famishing children for food, every 



16 

day whisper in the ears of starving fathers and mothers, 
yield or perish — sin or die. 

It is objected that our slaves are debarred educational 
advantages. The objection is well taken, but is without 
great force ; their station in society makes education neither 
necessary nor useful, besides it comes with a bad grace from 
England — eight-tenths of whose population have been de- 
barred them by causes stronger than law, and if they could by 
any means obtain them, it is difficult to show the advantages 
of education to English laborers, who are doomed to toil 
twelve hours a day for a money compensation inadequate to 
supply their lowest physical wants. We are reproached that 
the marriage relation is neither recognised nor protected by 
law. This reproach is not wholly unjust, this is an evil not 
yet remedied by law, but marriage is not inconsistent with 
the institution of slavery as it exists among us, and the 
objection, therefore, lies rather to an incident than to the 
essence of the system. But even in this we have deprived 
the slave of no pre-existing right. We found the race 
without any knowledge of, or regard for the institution of 
marriage, and we are reproached for not having, as yet, 
secured that and all other blessings of civilization. The 
separation of families is much relied on by the abolitionists 
in Europe and America. Some of the slaveholding states 
have already made partial provision against this evil, and all 
of them may do so ; but the objection is far more formidable 
in theory than practice, even without legislative interposition. 

The tendency of slave labour is to aggregation — of free 
labour to dispersion. The accidents of life, the desire to 
better one's condition, and the pressure of want (the proud 
man's contumely and oppressor's wrong) produce infi- 
nitely a greater amount of separation in families of the 
white races than that which ever happened to the slave. 
This is true every where, even in the United States, where 
the general condition of the people is prosperous. But it is 
still more marked in Europe. The injustice and despotism 



17 

of England to Ireland has produced more separation of 
Irish families, and sundered more domestic ties within the 
last ten years, than slavery has effected since its introduction 
into the United States. The twenty millions of freemen in 
the United States are living witnesses to the dispersive 
injustice of the old world. And to-day England is purcha- 
sing coolies in India, and apprentices in Africa, to redeem her 
AVest India possessions from the folly of emancipation. 
What severities has she thrown around the family altars of 
these miserable savages. It is in vain to call this separation 
voluntary — if it were true, that fact mitigates none of its 
evils. But it is the result of a necessity as stern, inexorable 
and irresistable, as the physical force which brings the slave 
from Virginia to Georgia. 

But the monster objection to our institution of slavery in the 
estimation of its opponents is, that wages arc withheld from 
labor — the force of the objection is lost in its want of truth. 
An examination of the true theory of wages will expose its 
fallacy. Under the system of free labor, wages are paid in 
money, the representative of products, in ours in products 
themselves. If we pay, in the comforts of life, more than 
the free laborer's pecuniary wages will buy, then our laborer 
is paid higher wages than the free laborer. The Parlia- 
mentary Reports in England show that the wages of agri- 
cultural and unskilled labor in Great Britain not only fails 
to furnish the laborer with the comforts of the slave, but 
even with the necessaries of life, and no slave holder in 
Georgia could escape a conviction for cruelty to his slaves 
who exacted from them the same amount of labor, for the 
same compensation in the necessaries of life, which noble- 
men and gentlemen of England pay their free laborers. 
Under their system man has become less valuable and less 
cared for than their domestic animals ; and noble Dukes will 
depopulate whole districts of men to supply their places with 
sheep, and then with intrepid audacity lecture and denounce 
American slaveholders. 



18 

The great conflict between labor and capital under free 
competition has ever been how the earnings of labor shall 
be divided between it and capital. In new and sparsely 
settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily 
produced, and education and intelligence approximate equal- 
ity, labor can struggle successfully in this warfare with 
capital. But this is an exceptional and temporary condition 
of society. In the old world this state of things has long 
since passed away, and the conflict with the lower grades of 
labor has long since ceased. There the compensation of 
unskilled labor, which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to 
a point scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. 
Among them the rate of increase is barely one per cent., and 
even at that rate population is considered a curse ; and in 
the older non-slaveholding states of this Union this great 
contest is becoming more and more unequal, and capital is 
fast becoming the master of labor, with all the benefits without 
the responsibility of the relation. In this division of the earn- 
ings of labor between it and capital the southern slave has a 
marked advantage over English labor, and is often equal 
with the free laborer of the North. Here again we are 
furnished with authentic data from which to reason. Our 
public statistics show that on cotton estates of the South, 
which is the chief branch of our agricultural industry, that 
one half of the arable lands are annually put under food 
crops. This half is wholly consumed, as a general rule, on 
the farm by the laborers and animals ; out of the other half 
must be paid all the necessary expenses of production, often 
including additional supplies of food beyond the produce of 
the land, which usually equals one-third of the residue, 
leaving but one-third for nett rent. The average rent of land 
in the New England States is equal to one-third of the gross 
produce, and it frequently amounts to one-half of it, (and in 
England it is even greater,) the tenant from his portion 
paying all expenses of production and support of himself 
and family. Then it is apparent that the laborer of the 



19 

South receives always as much and frequently a greater 
portion of the produce of the land than the laborer in New 
or Old England. Besides, here the portion due the slave is 
a charge upon the whole product of capital and upon the 
capital itself. It is neither dependant upon seasons nor sub- 
ject to accidents, and survives his own capacity for labor and 
even the ruin of his master. The general happiness, 
cheerfulness, and contentment of the slaves, compare favor- 
ably with that of laborers in any other age or country. They 
require no standing armies to enforce their obedience, while 
the evidences of discontent, and the appliance of force to 
repress it, are every where visible among the toiling millions 
of the earth. Even in the northern states of this Union, 
strikes and mobs, and labor unions, and combinations against 
employers, attest at once the misery and discontent of labor 
among them. The English keep a hundred thousand 
soldiers, a large navy, and an innumerable police to secure 
obedience to their social institutions, and physical force is the 
sole guarantee of her social order, the only cement of her 
gigantic empire. 

I have briefly traced the condition of the African race 
through all ages and all countries, and described it fairly and 
truly under American slavery, and I think that both proposi- 
tions fully established that here his position is superior to 
that of his race in any other land, and also to large masses 
of the Caucassian race, enjoying nominal freedom in the 
most favored nations of Christendom. The picture is not 
without shade as well as light. Evils and imperfections 
clinf to man and all of his institutions, this is not exempt 
from them. That the condition of the slave offers great 
opportunities for abuse is true, that these opportunities are 
frequently used to violate justice and humanity, is also true. 
But our laws restrain these abuses and punish these crimes, 
in this, as well as in all the other relations of life. They 
who assume it as a fundamental principle in the con- 
stitution of man, that abuse is the unvarying concomitant of 



20 

power and crime of opportunity, subvert the foundations of all 
private morals and of every social system. No where does 
this principle find a nobler refutation than in the treatment of 
the African race by southern slaveholders. And we may, 
with hope and confidence, safely leave to them the removal 
of the existing abuses under which it now labours and such 
further ameliorations of its condition as may be demanded 
by justice and humanity. His condition is not permanent 
among- us and we may find his exodus in the unvarying 
laws of population. Under the conditions of labor in En- 
gland, and the continent of Europe, slavery could not exist 
here or anywhere else. The moment wages descend to a 
point barely sufficient to support the laborer and his family, 
capital cannot afford to own labor, and slavery instantly 
ceases. Slavery ceased in England in obedience to this law 7 , 
and not from any regard to liberty or humanity. The 
increase of population will produce the same result in this 
country, and American slavery, like that of England, will 
mid its euthanasy in the general prostration of all labor. 

The next aspect in which I propose to view this question, 
is its effects upon the interests of the slaveholding states 
themselves. The great argument by which slavery was 
formerly assailed was that it was a dear, unprofitable and 
unproductive labor ; it was held that the slave himself would 
be a more productive member of society as a freeman than 
in bondage. The results of emancipation in the British and 
French West India Islands has not only disproven but 
annihilated this theory. And an inquiry into the wealth 
and prcduction of our slaveholding states will demonstrate 
that slave labor can be more economically and productively 
applied, at least to agriculture, than any other. The same 
truth will be made manifest by a comparison of the products 
of Cuba and Brazil, not only with these Islands and Hayti, 
but with those of the free races occupying the same latitudes 
and engaged in the same, or similar productions, in any part 
of the world. The slaveholdimr states with about one-half 



21 

of the white population, and three millions of slaves, furnish 
four-fifths of the whole exports of the Republic containing 
twenty-three millions of inhabitants, and their entire 
products, including every branch of industry exceed those of 
the more populous northern states. And a distinguished 
statesman of our own state has recently conclusively shown, 
by an accurate examination of our statistics, that Georgia 
with less than half of the population, about equals, in her 
productions of industry, the State of Ohio, one of the most 
prosperous of the northern states. The difference in real- 
ised wealth in proportion to population is not less remarkable 
and equally favorable to the slaveholding* states. 

I may safely leave the question of the fitness of slave 
labor for the production of wealth, to the authentic facts 
disclosed in the late census. But the fact needs some expla- 
nation, as it seems to be a profound mystery to the opponents 
of slavery, how the system is capable at the same time of 
increasing the comforts of the slave, the profits of the master, 
and do no violence to humanity. Yet its solution rests upon 
the soundest principles of political economy. Here the 
labour of the country is united with and protected by its 
capital, directed by the educated and intelligent, secured 
against its own weakness, waste and folly, associated in such 
form, as to give the greatest efficiency in production, and the 
least cost of maintenance. Each individual laborer of the 
North is the victim not only of his folly and extravagance, 
but of his ignorance, misfortunes and necessities. His 
isolation enlarges his expenses without increasing his com- 
forts, his want of capital increases the price of everything 
he buys, disables him from supplying his wants at favorable 
times, or on advantageous terms, and throws him in the 
hands of retailers and extortioners. But labor united with 
capital, directed by skill, forecast and intelligence, while it 
is capable of its highest production, is freed from these evils. 
leaves a margin both for increased comforts to the laborer 
and additional profits to capital This is the explanation of 
the seeming paradox. 



22 

The opponents of slavery, true to their monomania that 
it is the sum of all evils and crimes, in spite of all histo- 
ry, sacred and profane, ancient or modern, all facts and all 
truth, insist that its effect on the commonwealth is to ener- 
vate it, demoralise it, and render it incapable of advance- 
ment and a high civilization, and upon the citizen to debase 
him morally, physically and intellectually. Such is neither 
the truth of history, sacred or profane, nor the experience 
of our own past or present. To the Hebrew race were 
committed the oracles of the Most High, slaveholding priests 
administered at his altar, and slaveholding patriarchs and 
prophets received his revelations, taught them to their own, 
and transmitted them to all generations of men. Letters, and 
arts, and science, and power, and wealth, and dominion, first 
arose from the dark night of the past in slaveholding Egypt. 
The highest forms of ancient civivilization, and the noblest 
development of the individual man, are to be found in the 
ancient commonwealths of Greece and Rome. In Greece, 
liberty, in the midst of domestic slavery, first erected legal 
barriers against political despotism, and maintained them 
with a heroism which has excited the admiration of all 
subsequent ages. 

In great achievements in arms, in science and arts, she 
stands pre-eminent among the nations of the earth. States- 
men study her institutions, and learn lessons of political 
wisdom, and the highest intellects of every age have delight- 
ed in her literature, notwithstanding the boasted advance- 
ment of our age. Homer, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Thucy- 
dides, and Xenophon, are yet text books in our schools and 
colleges ; and in eloquence, in rhetoric, in poetry, in painting, 
in sculpture and architecture, you must still go and search 
amid the wreck and ruins of her genius for "the pride of 
every model and the perfection of every master." 

Public liberty and domestic slavery were cradled together 
and marked the civil polity of the commonwealth of ancient 
Rome. Her hardy sons, distinguished for personal prowess, 



for frugality and simplicity of manners, for public and pri- 
vate virtue, and the intensity of their patriotism, carried her 
victorious eagles in triumph over the then known world. 
She overran Greece, appropriated her civilization, studied 
her literature, and rivalled her glory, in letters. She carried 
her civilization with her conquests over western Europe, and 
time has not yet been able to efface the footprints of her 
language, her literature, or her liberty ; and her jurispru- 
dence, surviving her nationality, has incorporated itself in 
that of all the civilized nations of Europe and America. 
The language and literature of both, stamped with immor- 
tality, passes on to mingle itself in the thought and speech 
of all lands and all countries. But it is needless to multiply 
illustrations. That domestic slavery neither enfeebles or 
deteriorates our race, that it is not inconsistent with the 
highest advancement of man or society, is the lesson taught 
by all ancient and confirmed by all modern history. 

Its effects in strengthening rather than weakening the 
attachment of the dominant race to liberty was clearly 
perceived and eloquently expressed in the British Parliament 
by Edmund Bufke, one of the most accomplished and phi- 
losophical statesmen England ever produced. Mr. Burke, 
in his speech on conciliation with America, uses the following 
language : "where this is the case, those who are free, are by 

far the most proud and jealous of their freedom 

I can not alter the nature of man. The fact is so, and 
these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, 
and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to 
liberty than those to the northward. Such were all the 
ancient commonwealths, such were our Gothic ancestors, and 
such in our day were the Poles ; and such will be all masters 
of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a people 
the haughtiness of denunciation combines itself with the 
spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible." 

And it is worthy of remark that these opinions are quoted, 
approved, and inserted in his work on the Constitution of 



24 

the United States by that eminent statesman and profound 
jurist, the late Joseph Story. 

Mr. Burke's opinion has been amply sustained by the 
history of our Republic. Our separation from England was 
declared in the Southern States. The author of the decla- 
ration of our Independence, and the great leader of our 
armies, the foremost man of all the earth, were born and 
reared under Southern Institutions. In that great conflict, 
the posts of danger and duty were no where shunned by the 
sons of the South, their eloquence every where aroused and 
animated the spirit of liberty among their countrymen, and 
their .valour in its defence was illustrated in every battle 
field. British aggression upon the citizens and commerce 
of the Northern States caused the war of 1812, yet the 
Southern States were neither behind them in its declaration 
or maintainance, her statesmen vindicated its policy in coun- 
cil and her soldiers maintained it in the field, and the crown- 
ing o-lorv of that war is indelibly associated with the conduct 
and courage of her sons. The two great leaders of the 
Mexican war were her sons, and her regiments were not 
unworthy competitors with their northern comrades for the 
honors of that conflict. The civil history of the country 
furnishes us little evidence of her inferiority, and the 
reproach has been of a different character. The genius 
and intellectual power of statesmen are impressed upon her 
foreign and domestic policy and are written on every page 
of her history. In none of the pursuits of life are to be 
found the evidences of her moral, physical or intellectual 

inferiority. 

The history of our own state is an illustrious example of 
what progress society may make under our institutions. 
We came out of the revolution with less than seventy thou- 
sand inhabitants, nearly one half of whom were slaves. 
Sparsely scattered along the coast, and upon the margin of 
Savannah River, almost surrounded by the most powerful 
and warlike Indian tribes on the continent, who occupied 



25 

four-fifths of our territory, our fields were laid waste, and 
our hearths made desolate by the combined atrocities of the 
British and Indians. We were without organized govern- 
ment, without wealth, without the means of education, of re- 
ligious instruction, with nothing but strong arms and stout 
hearts, and this fair domain, which valour had wrested from 
the iron grasp of tyranny. Some of these sixty thousand 
inhabitants now live to behold a great commonwealth con- 
taining a million of inhabitants, powerful, rich, educated, 
moral and refined, prosperous and happy, with a republi- 
can government adequate to the protection of public liberty 
and private rights, which is cheerfully obeyed, supported, 
and upheld by all classes of society. With a noble system 
of internal improvements, penetrating almost every neigh- 
borhood, stimulating and rewarding the industry of her 
people, with moral and intellectual improvement, keeping 
pace with physical ; with churches, school-houses, and col- 
leges daily multiplying in the land, bringing religious instruc- 
tion and education to the homes of the people throughout 
our borders. And there is a marked feature in all this pro- 
gress and improvement of society, which illustrates the 
character of our population. They have been effected, not 
by the government, but by the individual efforts of an 
enlightened, moral, energetic and religious people. All of 
our colleges (except the State University) have been erected 
and endowed by their voluntary contributions. This proud 
edifice in which I address you to-day is a monument to their 
public spirit, their wisdom and munificence. By the same 
means, we have enlarged the sphere and elevated the stan- 
dard of female education to a point not excelled, if equalled, 
in any other country. The religious teachers of our people, 
a body of clergymen alike distinguished for piety, learning, 
and true eloquence, are without legal provision for their sup- 
port, but are maintained by the voluntary aid of those whom 
they so well serve. Duty and conscience are our only tithe- 
proctors, yet the gospel is preached throughout our borders 
3 



26 

to rich and poor, bond and free, worshipping around the 
same altars with a power and purity of which the fruits are 
the best witnesses. Such is our social system and such our 
condition under it. Its political wisdom is vindicated in its 
effects on society, its morality by the practices of the Patri- 
archs and the teachings of the Apostles ; we submit it to the 
judgment of the civilized world with the firm conviction 
that the adoption of no other system under our circumstan- 
ces would have exhibited the individual man (bond or free) 
in a higher development, or society in a happier civilization. 



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